Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Innscor Africa Ltd., Zimbabwe’s
biggest food company, said it’s complying with indigenization
laws while the government gave it a seven-day deadline to offer
a plan to abide by them or face punishment including a shutdown.

The National Indigenization and Economic Empowerment Board
said it sent a letter to the Harare-based company which Innscor
Chief Executive Officer John Koumides may have been motivated by
a national election President Robert Mugabe has said he wants to
be held in March.

“We have complied with the indigenization laws a long time
ago,” he said in a telephone interview from the capital,
Harare. “Somebody is playing games with that letter. It’s old.
As we approach elections, these things will always pop up.’

Zimbabwe in 2010 introduced a law that requires foreign and
white-owned domestic companies with more than $500,000 in assets
to sell or cede 51 percent to black Zimbabweans. The law first
targeted mining companies and was later extended to foreign-owned banks and other enterprises.

The country has the world’s largest platinum deposits after
neighboring South Africa. Gold, diamonds, ferrochrome, coal,
copper and asbestos are some of the minerals mined there by
companies such as Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd.’s Zimplats unit,
Aquarius Platinum Ltd. and Sinosteel Corp.

The government can have Innscor’s operating licenses
revoked until it complies, Zwelibanzi Lunga, the Indigenization
board’s director for compliance, said. The letter’s deadline
expired ‘‘sometime in December,” he said.

“Innscor should just comply with our laws,” he said by
telephone from Harare today. “To start with, 98% of its
directors are non-indigenous and they are white persons, so it’s
silly for anybody to tell us they are compliant. Anyone who
doesn’t want to comply can pack up and go.”

The company owns fast-food outlets in several African
nations and also controls National Foods Holdings Ltd., a
milling company, in partnership with Johannesburg-listed.
Innscor operates Spar grocery shops across Zimbabwe. The company
also owns Colcom Holdings Ltd., Zimbabwe’s biggest pork
producer, and Padenga Holdings Ltd., a crocodile-hide exporter.